21(2008)
Very loosely based on the college kids run on Las Vegas a
few decades ago, this is ok, but not phenomenal. If you're into
sleeper gambling movies, watch The Grand or The Rounders,
or better still, the original Ocean's Eleven! B-
From Amazon.com:
An unconvincing exercise in moral complexity, 21 is based on
Ben Mezrich's book Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story
of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. Jim Sturgess
(Across the Universe) plays brilliant, blue-collar scholar Ben
Campbell, whose doubts that he'll win a scholarship to Harvard
Medical School compel him to join a secret, M.I.T. gang of math
whiz kids. Under the silky but chilling command of a math professor
(Kevin Spacey), Jim and the others master card counting, i.e., the
statistical analysis of cards dealt in blackjack games. The team
lives a humdrum existence during the week, but on weekends
in Sin City, the students are rolling in cash, going to exclusive
clubs, and feeling on top of the world. (Ben even gets the girl:
a comely, fellow counter played by Kate Bosworth.) Despite all
that success, Ben feels ethically compromised, and indeed director
Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde), in the old tradition of American
movies, plays it both ways where fun vices are concerned. On the
one hand, it feels so good; on the other, ahem, we know it's wrong.
That studied ambivalence proves wearing after a while, making
the most interesting character in the film a casino watchdog played
by Laurence Fishburne. A master at reading the emotions of gamblers
beating the house with a scam, he's admirable for being good at his
job, but repellent for wrecking the faces of counters in casino dungeons.
He's all about moral complexity in the tradition of anti-heroes, and
a truly provocative element in an otherwise superficial movie. --Tom Keogh